


Selfsame

by Solar_Sylvilagus



Category: The Glass Scientists (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Introspection, barely beta read, disconnected and rambling, underlying existentialism, vague relating to my own identity and dissociation issues, what more can you ask from a drabble i wrote in under an hour at 4 a.m?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28597488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solar_Sylvilagus/pseuds/Solar_Sylvilagus
Summary: For as much Henry Jekyll may like to imagine Edward Hyde a parasite, a gorged tick clinging to the belly of a dog, he knew all too well that wasn't the case. A shattered mirror, broken not cleanly down the middle as he had hoped, but full of jagged edges. One made two. “I” made “we.” Made “us.” Made “our's.”
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Selfsame

**Author's Note:**

> This is more of a drabble than anything but! I only recently fell, hard, into this fandom. And if I didn't finish this and get it out of my WIP folder it would moulder in there forever.
> 
> Jekyll really still isn't sure how to feel about being "we" not "I"

The night was young, but the buildings were old. Crumbling shingles slid under his feet, and the ground soared. Looming at once all too close, before pulling away. Swaying in and out of focus. Giddy. Heady. Laughing careless and free, delighting in the spinning of his head and the dancing, twinkling lights all around him. Streetlamps became tiny stars, flickering in and out of life. The stars themselves mere glimmers in the puddles, glitter decanted by some careless artist. Beautiful. Gorgeous. He ran, just to see how they would blur in his periphery.

Henry was gone now. Quiet. Sunk down and away from the delirium, where it couldn't touch him. Thinking himself too saintly to enjoy something so improper, so _base_ as an altered state.

Unbidden, memories floated up. A child spinning in circles, just to see how the sky continued twirling once he stopped. To giggle in awed delight as his world had changed, just that easily. A fascinating new perspective, dizzying, everything too close and yet too far.

No, now he was grown. A responsible adult who drank not for the sensation, but for the numbness. For the nothingness of sleep. Deep and dreamless.

\- - - - - - -

Memories of before they were they were... complex. A confusion of wording. Of what belonged to who, now. For as much Henry Jekyll may like to imagine Edward Hyde a parasite, a gorged tick clinging to the belly of a dog, he knew all too well that wasn't the case. A shattered mirror, broken not cleanly down the middle as he had hoped, but full of jagged edges. One made two. “I” made “we.” Made “us.” Made “our's.”

Our's.

Because that's what it was, wasn't it? No longer “mine” but “our's.” Hyde knew all that Jekyll did, though it may evade him at times. And the same went for Jekyll.

Sometimes, in the journal he kept most secret, this confusion of pronouns followed him. “We” did this. “We” felt that. Always scribbled out with fury, with rage. Ink blotting the paper as _he_ rewrote. I. He. Jekyll. Hyde.

Worse still was when things bled through. When Henry Jekyll's carriage took a detour through the worse parts of London, and he felt not disgust but fondness. Familiarity. Faces remembered as though they were from a dream. A foreign, painful spark in chest as he met the eyes of a barkeep. Of a whore on a street corner. Of a pickpocket, slipping through the crowd, unassuming to all but those who knew the ways of London slums.

Obvious to him.

And worst of all, when he stood before the Society. When he looked upon the fruits of his labour. And, unbidden thought “Our's.”

\- - - - - - -

Jekyll's glittering glass cabinets with their golden trim, holding neat lines of deadly poisons in spotless bottles. The dusty glass of a liquor cabinet, door ajar, holding poisons of a different breed.

And just like Jekyll mixed his potions with exacting care and steady hands, so did Hyde. When he found himself pouring his own drinks.

Balancing the spoon carefully over the glass and placing the sugar cube atop it. Pouring water, slowly, until it all melted away. Then the absinthe, such a lovely green. A couple more sugar cubes tossed in afterwards (whilst Henry grimaced in the background.) and stirred until they began to dissolve.

_'I wouldn't call that alchemy. Cavities, maybe.'_

Henry thought he was funny sometimes.

_'Shouldn't you be watering that down more?'_

Hyde crunched a half-melted sugar cube, spitefully dragging the granules over his gums. Henry sighed and resolved to brush his teeth as soon as they returned home.

\- - - - - -

Morning ablutions, the sound of a straight razor severing hair from skin. Stubble disappearing under sudsy foam, and both swiped away with a blade as sharp and as deadly as any found in the hands of crooks.

A faded scar on his chin, a youthful stumble with a too sharp blade. A jagged white line on his forehead, carefully covered by hair. A broken bottle, glass sharp and stinging and still dripping with blood and liquor.

Mine. His. Jekyll. Hyde.

Divided. Wholly separate.

Hyde's sweet absinthe hidden under peppermints and a dab of cologne.


End file.
